Because We Are Not Dogs, Perhaps?

Microchipping raises its head again.

Athletes need to be fitted with microchips, in a similar way that dogs are, in the fight against drug cheats in sport, according to a leading representative of international sports people.

Mike Miller, the World Olympians Association chief executive, claimed that radical anti-doping methods – including implants to recognise the effects of banned substances – are needed to protect clean sport.

Wow! Seriously, wow! Personally, I regard all sport as over rated, over blown and a waste of time effort and money. So I really couldn’t give a hoot about doping. However, this is beyond a rational response – not least that these people regard naturally occurring hormones as a sign of doping – along with over the counter medicines for common ailments. This is just how anal and self-regarding the whole junket has become.

This proposal though is so nasty and so draconian any reasonable person will tell Miller where he can insert his microchips. Athletes are people, not dogs, they are their own people, they are not owned by the relevant regulatory bodies and, frankly, the issue of doping simply isn’t an excuse sufficient to warrant such a vile authoritarian response.

“Some people say we shouldn’t do this to people,” Miller said. “Well, we’re a nation of dog lovers, we’re prepared to chip our dogs and it doesn’t seem to harm them, so why aren’t we prepared to chip ourselves?”

Seriously this moron is equating athletes to pets – owned pets. I would suggest that most people would say we shouldn’t do it because even a cursory check of the moral compass will tell us that this is way off the scale of wrongness.

Some people say it’s an invasion of privacy, well, sport is a club and people don’t have to join the club if they don’t want to, if they can’t follow the rules.

To insert a foreign object into someone’s body most certainly is an invasion and nothing – absolutely nothing – justifies such authoritarian behaviour; certainly not your insignificant and unimportant world of some people running faster than other people. This man is pure evil. It is not a case of “some people say” it is objectively an invasion of privacy.

The idea of microchips being inserted into athletes would likely be met with mixed reaction. Some athletes are fiercely protective of their right to privacy and feel the existing Adams whereabouts system is already overly invasive. Whereabouts rules dictate that athletes must declare on an online database where they will be every day for a one-hour window between 5am and 11pm, so drug testers can turn up without warning.

I work in an environment where we are tested for drugs and alcohol. This is because it is safety critical and our regime isn’t this invasive because it doesn’t need to be. So I tend to agree with those who claim that the current system is already intrusive. This man is a monster.

 

8 Comments

  1. Some people say it’s an invasion of privacy, well, sport is a club and people don’t have to join the club if they don’t want to, if they can’t follow the rules.

    In a single sentence, Miller shows why he is completely unsuitable to be leading the WAO. The athletes to be treated like cattle, all at the behest of the desk jockey with a job title.

  2. On a deeper level it displays the modern ‘normality’ where everyone is automatically assumed to be guilty of an offence unless they can prove otherwise. This is how our authorities increasingly work, so no surprise the attitude spreads down through society.

  3. If this were to become a mandatory procedure for athletes, I would imagine that a good hacker would pretty soon work out how to re-program the chips to give the desired result, thus rendering them totally ineffective.

    Personally, I’d be inclined to do away with all this drug testing bollocks altogether, and let them do what they like, up to a point. Screen for amphetamines and the other very obvious performance enhancing drugs before an event, and then just let them get on with it. Because, let’s admit it, the athletes are always going to be one step ahead of the drug testers anyway, and whatever the authorities do, they aren’t going to stop it, so why not just say: “Ok, x, y, z and their derivatives are forbidden, anything else is fine”.

  4. “…absolutely nothing – justifies such authoritarian behaviour; certainly not your insignificant and unimportant world of some people running faster than other people.”

    I listened to a prog recently about the lengths to which para-athletes are going to gain competitive advantage: to be assigned to a group in which people are classed as more disabled they are making themselves temporarily more disabled. It’s not an insignificant and unimportant world when there’s so much money involved. The usual story.

    • Ahh, Julia. Maybe you remember (or have been told of) Tamara Press – Soviet athlete of the early 60’s (1960 & 1964 Olympics) who, with her sister Irina, was the subject of gender controversy, and the two were often rather unkindly referred to as “The Press Brothers”. This was of course before gender confirmation became mandatory.

      I recall it fairly clearly despite just entering my teens at the time (I’m a 1950 model).

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